Important: As we found out after posting this review, MSI included a special reviewer BIOS on their card, which runs higher clock speeds out of the box, that match the "OC" setting of the MSI Gaming app. All our testing has been performed with the higher clocked BIOS. I did some retesting after publishing the review, performance differences are less than 1%, and power/heat/noise are unchanged within margin of error of our measurement equipment.

MSI's GTX 780 Ti is almost too good to be true. The card comes overclocked out of the box, to 1020 MHz base clock, which, thanks to Boost 2.0, runs the card at 1144 MHz on average - higher than most other custom GTX 780 Ti cards. Compare this to the GTX 780 Ti reference board and it results in a significant 8% percent performance improvement, making it the fastest graphics card we ever tested. Yes, even faster than the dual-GPU HD 7990 and GTX 690. Compared to AMD's Radeon R9 290X, the difference is 16%, which is about as much as the R9 290X's lead over the previous-generation HD 7970 GHz. It would have been nice to see a small bump in memory clocks, too. I suspect some kind of limitation from NVIDIA's side there since nearly no custom board partner increased memory clock beyond the memory chips' rated frequency.
What is even more amazing is that MSI has achieved these fantastic performance results without scorching temperatures or lots of fan noise. While MSI uses a reference-design PCB, they have opted for the latest version of their well-known dual-fan TwinFrozr thermal solution, which we've seen on other cards before. Temperatures reach only 78°C, which is well below the temperature limit beyond which Boost 2.0 starts reducing clocks to keep the card cool. The real highlight of the MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming, however, is fan noise. The card is whisper quiet in idle, which will be important if you don't game all the time. More importantly, once you start gaming, fan speed increases just a little bit, enough to keep the card cool without all hell breaking loose. At just 30 dBA, the MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming is quieter than most graphics cards, no matter their performance segment - and this is the fastest card we ever tested! I recently reviewed several GTX 780 Ti cards, by all the big players, and none are even close in noise levels. It really is a night and day difference, even more so when you start comparing this card to AMD's R9 290X flagship.
Overclocking of our card worked well, providing another 5% performance improvement. Not a huge difference, it is probably still enough to make looking into manual overclocking worthwhile. When I disassembled the card, I spotted a missing thermal pad on the voltage regulation circuitry. I can't say if it is an isolated issue or whether it's widespread. What I can say, however, is that the card was perfectly stable at all times, no issues encountered.
You can find MSI's GTX 780 Ti Gaming online right now for $710, which is just a small $10 price increase over the reference design cards, and definitely worth it. Compared to other premium models in the $730 range, the card is also much better than other premium models in the $730 range, and in every metric that matters except for, maybe, maximum manual OC, which also has a luck-of-the-draw element to it. If you don't want to spend that much money on a graphics card, AMD's R9 290/290X could be more affordable alternatives, but be prepared to experience much higher noise and temperatures. I, for my part, will be replacing my personal system's ASUS GTX 670 Direct CU with the MSI GTX 780 Ti Gaming as it's the best card I've reviewed in a long time.